08-15-2001
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Join Date: Jul 2001
Last Activity: 16 June 2011, 4:50 PM EDT
Location: Portland, OR, USA
Posts: 1,626
Thanks Given: 2
Thanked 15 Times in 13 Posts
Unix as an operating system does not exist. As Neo states so well, it's an architectural design - a style. Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, BSD, SCO... they're all "Unix". And yes, you can run different 'types' of Unix on the same machine.
Also, the "original" UNIX was slow, cumbersome (you had to reboot the system before you could use a newly created directory), and underdeveloped. That was in 1969. Now, the various Unices comprise a giant chunk of the world's high-end servers, and is even making headway in the desktop world. It has become one of the most advanced, powerful, flexible, and stable operating system in the world.
P.S. - The first development efforts at Bell Labs in 1969 were on a PDP-7 computer... far from 64-bit. It had an 18 bit word space. Wierd, wild stuff, man!